After taking a MRCA gene test, Jill Martin from the Today show has shared her breast cancer diagnosis. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Martin is urging viewers to also get genetically screened to check if they have any early stage cancers.
“I have been diagnosed with breast cancer. And it feels like someone else telling this story. Six weeks ago, it happened really fast,” Martin shared on the NBC News morning program on Monday. She shared that her diagnosis came six weeks after she had scans done in order to undergo preventative surgery since breast cancer is something that runs within her own family. Through the genetic testing for mutations and the BRCA gene, which is the gene that is associated with a more likely chance of forming breast cancer, her own breast cancer was found.
“That test saved my life. Had I not gotten the test, I wouldn’t have got the scans and we would be telling a very different story. So I feel super grateful to be here, to be able to say talk to your doctors and go get tested,” Martin told her co-stars Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb who also spoke about her own journey with her breast cancer diagnosis and surgery.
Jill Martin also shared that the BRCA gene is not solely prominent amongst women, but within men as well as both she and her father were tested and tested positive for the BRCA gene. She stated, “Let me be clear: My mother had breast cancer. She tested negative for the BRCA gene. They said, has your father been tested? I said, breast cancer does not run in my father’s family. They said get tested anyways. I always associated this with something women got, and so many people I’ve spoken to said they didn’t know this was something men should be tested for.”